(Picture credit Matt Johnson)
The National Rifle Association Political Victory Fund (NRA-PVF) announced on Wednesday that it was endorsing U.S. Senator Pete Ricketts in his reelection bid.
“This November, the Second Amendment is on the ballot. From Washington to your state capitol, anti-gun advocates are running a coordinated campaign to elect politicians determined to dismantle the God-given rights of law-abiding Americans,” John Commerford, the chairman of the group, said in a statement. “This is no time for complacency. Every gun owner must take an active role in protecting those rights.”
The NRA-PVF serves as the political action committee for the National Rifle Association (NRA). In addition to Ricketts, the group also endorsed and gave “A” ratings to each of Nebraska’s three congressional candidates, Governor Jim Pillen, and Attorney General Mike Hilgers.
Ricketts said in a statement that he was “honored to receive the group’s endorsement.” “I will always protect Nebraskans’ Second Amendment rights. Dan Osborn wants preemptive red flag laws and mandatory government mental health exams for gun owners just to keep firearms they already legally own,” he said. “I will never put a bureaucrat between Nebraskans and their constitutional rights.”
Osborn Receives an ‘F’
The NRA-PVF gave Osborn an “F” grade on its scorecard, labeling him a “true enemy of gun owners' rights.” The group said they give failing grades to candidates “who always opposes gun owners' rights and/or actively leads anti-gun legislative efforts, or sponsors anti-gun legislation.”
In recent years, the political action group has almost exclusively backed Republican candidates. Opposition to Osborn comes after the candidate has made comments suggesting he supports controversial gun control legislation.
Osborn brought up the idea of a preemptive “red flag” law targeting owners of “assault-style rifles” during an Omaha town hall this summer. The proposal would require gun owners to undergo a mental health evaluation every five years to re-register those weapons.
The candidate recounted a conversation with a gun owner at a town hall in Columbus to illustrate his support for the idea:
“I said, ‘Do you own an assault-style rifle, an AR-15, an M16, an AK-47, or anything like that?’ He’s like, ‘Yeah. I got a lot of them,’” Osborn recalled. “I said, ‘Let me ask you, would you have an issue with having to re-register those guns after taking a mental health exam—let’s say, I don’t know, just throwing a random number out there—every five years?’ He sat for a second and he said, ‘No.’”
Osborn later suggested that law enforcement was likely to support the measure.
The NRA subsequently condemned Osborn’s comments, calling them “radical” and saying it would “grant government control over who can exercise their constitutional rights.”
In an interview with The Plains Sentinel, Justin Davis, the NRA's Director of Public Affairs, called Osborn’s proposal “cockamamie” and “deeply unserious,” saying it was the reason the group opposes his Senate run.
“When we do NRA grades, we take in everything a politician has done and said — that’s public comments, that’s voting records,” he said. “In Osborn’s case, his pretty outrageous comments about mental health checks for people who own certain types of firearms — it’s not only unconstitutional but deeply unserious.”
Following the initial reporting on his comments, Osborn responded saying it was “fake news.”
“I support the Second Amendment, and the Second Amendment is for everybody - it's for Republicans and Democrats and libertarians and independents,” he said. “I was simply telling a story about an interaction I had with a voter in Columbus in 2023.”
Osborn’s campaign did not immediately return a request for comment on the NRA-PVF endorsement.
— John Gage is the executive editor of The Plains Sentinel.